The National Football League! I can’t wait for Thursday night’s 2023 NFL season kickoff as the reigning, defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Detroit Lions. It kicks off 272 games of which I plan to survive by picking a team each week that is a winner. Each week I’ll reveal my NFL survivor pool strategy along with ranking my survivor picks.
In choosing my weekly survivor pool pick, I stay steady with a strategy to filter out the teams I won’t consider and then rank the ones remaining.
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NFL Survivor Pick Strategy
First, I start by picking the winner of each game so we cut our list from 32 to 16 to start. Here are my week 1 winners:
- Kansas City Chiefs
- Washington Commanders
- Atlanta Falcons
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Baltimore Ravens
- Jacksonville Jaguars
- San Francisco 49ers
- Minnesota Vikings
- New Orleans Saints
- Green Bay Packers
- Denver Broncos
- Seattle Seahawks
- Los Angeles Chargers
- Philadelphia Eagles
- Dallas Cowboys
- Buffalo Bills
This list is based upon our data driven NFL predictions and form a solid basis from which to choose a survivor for the NFL week ahead.
Then, I eliminate toss-up games. These are games with margins of victory of 3 or fewer points based upon the Formulator’s predicted scores. So I’m eliminating the following teams:
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Green Bay Packers
- Denver Broncos
- Los Angeles Chargers
We’re down from 16 to 12 teams remaining as candidates for my 2023 NFL week 1 survivor pool pick. Next I eliminate road teams. When I must win, I want to go with a home team. I now eliminate the following road teams in week 1:
- Jacksonville Jaguars
- San Francisco 49ers
- Philadelphia Eagles
- Dallas Cowboys
- Buffalo Bills
This cuts us down to 7 teams and now we look for the teams that aren’t in the top 16 of our NFL power rankings this week. We need a strong team if we must win so if they’re not in the top half of the league, we’re passing on them as a survivor pick. That removes the following teams from week 1 consideration:
- Atlanta Falcons
- Washington Commanders
- New Orleans Saints
We’re down to our final four for our week 1 NFL survivor pool pick so we’re choosing from the Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens, Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks. Here’s how I rank the survivor pick candidates this week:
4 – Seattle Seahawks (against Los Angeles Rams) – I tend to stay away from division match-ups for a survivor pick as the teams are so familiar with one another that upsets can happen.
3 – Kansas City Chiefs (against Detroit Lions) – Chris Jones is holding out and Travis Kelce isn’t 100% after a Tuesday injury in practice. This worries me against a Lions team ready to send a message to the league on opening night. I think the Chiefs win but this is a close game.
2 – Minnesota Vikings (against Tampa Bay Bucs) – How will Baker Mayfield fair with the Bucs? This is the question heading into the season. He has weapons to duel Kirk Cousins in this one so it’s too much uncertainty for me to count on the Vikings when there’s an obvious pick for this week.
1 – Baltimore Ravens (against Houston Texans) – I’ve got the Ravens in a blowout. Lamar Jackson returns for them and will look to light up the scoreboard with his new weapon OBJ. CJ Stroud is in over his head in the NFL and this game gets out of hand. I see the Ravens winning by four touchdowns.
2023 NFL Week 1 Survivor Pool Pick – Baltimore Ravens
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